Blogs

Today K10 will be exploring a new region within the "West" area at Black Point Lava FLow. This region is northwest of where we've been operating the past couple of days, and includes some outcrops of a high albedo material and exposed layering.

We began today by examining data from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) for the initial K10 exploration site, marked with a yellow star in the image. ASTER has a resolution of 15 m/pixel, which is less than our black and white base map image. However, since ASTER operates in the both the visible and the infrared wavelengths, it can provide compositional information about our field area.

Using a 3D imaging lidar “ILRIS-3D” onboard the K-10 Black, we were able to collect 3D data along several waypoints of the west traverse.

The lidar is employed to perform geological survey i.e. detailed mapping of geological structures and features such as Mesas, depressions, boulders etc. The 3D nature of lidar data enhances the way the science team analyses the region of interest by giving them the ability to ascertain dimensions, ranges and bearings to features with high accuracy.

Day 4 was extremely challenging. It was the first day we started working with the full complement of our ground control structure. We now have scientists in the science operations room generating plans which are subsequently uploaded to the rover by the flight control team who are monitoring the status of the rover. Then of course there's us, the rover team, in the field.

The science team spent the day developing a field geology traverse plan to explore the "Western Area" of Black Point Lava Flow. We began by creating a plan that would take astronauts driving the Lunar Electric Rover a day to perform. This plan involves visiting 15 stations, or stops, and carrying out work such as rock collection, photography, etc.

On day 3, we accomplished a lot! We ran simple plans generated by the Ames ground control team on K10 black, got voice comms between the field and Ames up, checked out K10 red to make sure it was fully functional after shipment, and sent a scouting team to investigate an area further north that we might be expected to operate at later this week. The weather was great and we were feeling really good with all of our accomplishments by the end of day 3, but how things changed with day 4!

K10 black is moving! The ground control team at Ames was able to teleoperate and upload a few plans to K10. We still need to iron out some issues to be fully functional, but we're making good progress.

Overall, day 1 was a productive day. We spent the morning setting up our field infrastructure and assembling robots. In the afternoon, we worked out network issues and ended the day with K10 black communicating to a few of our Ames computers. We are hopeful that tomorrow we will be able to do an end to end test with the ground control team at Ames interfacing with and getting data back from the rover in the field.

We spent today doing initial test setup at Black Point Lava Flow and at the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI). The field team setup the mobile base camp at 10:30a and then unpacked K10 Black, which will be the primary robot for the test. So far, K10 Black looks to be in good shape, with all sensors and science instruments checked out.

IRG's field team arrived at Black Point Lava Flow today along with two K10 robots ("Black" and "Red") and field equipment. The robots are still packed up, but everything seems to have survived transport from NASA Ames in good condition. We'll start unpacking and powering things up tomorrow. In the mean time, we've started testing our mobile base camp (two box trucks and three 4WD pickup trucks).